The Lookout Man. B. M. Bower

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СКАЧАТЬ his revolver backward to impress silence on the others. "Let's all shoot! Make 'em think they've run into a mess of tacks!"

      "Aw, take a wheel off their tin wagon!" a laughter-hoarse voice bettered the plan.

      "Hold 'em up and take a nickel off 'em—if they carry that much on their persons after dark," another suggested.

      "You're on, bo! This is a hold-up. Hist!"

      A hold-up they proceeded to make it. They halted the little car with a series of explosions as it passed. The driver was alone, and as he climbed out to inspect his tires, he confronted what looked to his startled eyes like a dozen masked men. Solemnly they went through his pockets while he stood with his hands high above him. They took his half-plug of chewing tobacco and a ten-cent stick-pin from his tie, and afterwards made him crank his car and climb back into the seat and go on. He went—with the throttle wide open and the little car loping down the boulevard like a scared pup.

      "Watch him went!" shrieked one they called Hen, doubling himself together in a spasm of laughter.

      "'He was—here—when we started, b-but he was—gone—when we got th'ough!'" chanted another, crudely imitating a favorite black-faced comedian.

      Jack, one arm thrown across the wheel, leaned out and looked back, grinning under the red band stretched across the middle of his face. "Ah, pile in!" he cried, squeezing his gum between his teeth and starting the engine. "He might come back with a cop."

      That tickled them more than ever. They could hardly get back into the car for laughing. "S-o-m-e little bandits!—what?" they asked one another over and over again.

      "S-o-m-e little bandits is—right!" the approving answer came promptly.

      "S-o-m-e time, bo, s-o-m-e time!" a drink-solemn voice croaked in a corner of the big seat.

      Thus did the party of Christian Endeavorers return sedately from their trip to Mount Wilson.

CHAPTER TWO

       Table of Contents

      "THANKS FOR THE CAR"

      They held up another car with two men in it, and robbed them of insignificant trifles in what they believed to be a most ludicrous manner. Afterward they enjoyed prolonged spasms of mirth, their cachinnations carrying far out over the flat lands disturbing inoffensive truck gardeners in their sleep. They cried "S-o-m-e time!" so often that the phrase struck even their fuddled brains as being silly.

      They met another car—a large car with three women in the tonneau. These, evidently, were home-going theatre patrons who had indulged themselves in a supper afterwards. They were talking quietly as they came unsuspectingly up to the big, shiny machine that was traveling slowly townward, and they gave it no more than a glance as they passed.

      Then came the explosion, that sounded surprisingly like a blowout. The driver stopped and got out to look for trouble, his companion at his heels. They confronted six masked men, three of them displaying six-shooters.

      "Throw up your hands!" commanded a carefully disguised voice.

      The driver obeyed—but his right hand came up with an automatic pistol in it. He fired straight into the bunch—foolishly, perhaps; at any rate harmlessly, though they heard the bullet sing as it went by. Startled, one of the six fired back impulsively, and the other two followed his example. Had they tried to kill, in the night and drunk as they were, they probably would have failed; but firing at random, one bullet struck flesh. The man with the automatic flinched backward, reeled forward drunkenly and went down slowly, his companion grasping futilely at his slipping body.

      "Hey, you darn mutts, whatcha shootin' for? Hell of a josh, that is!" Jack shouted angrily and unguardedly. "Cut that out and pile in here!"

      While the last man was clawing in through the door, Jack let in the clutch, slamming the gear-lever from low to high and skipping altogether the intermediate. The big car leaped forward and Hen bit his tongue so that it bled. Behind them was confused shouting.

      "Better go back and help—what? You hit one," Jack suggested over his shoulder, slowing down as reason cooled his first hot impulse for flight.

      "Go back nothing! And let 'em get our number? Nothing doing!"

      "Aw, that mark that was with him took it. I saw him give it the once-over when he came back."

      "He did not!" some one contradicted hotly. "He was too scared."

      "Well, do we go back?" Jack was already edging the car to the right so that he would have room for a turn.

      "No! Step on 'er! Let 'er out, why don't yuh? Damn it, what yuh killin' time for? Yuh trying to throw us down? Want that guy to call a cop and pinch the outfit? Fine pal you are! We've got to beat it while the beatin's good. Go on, Jack—that's a good boy. Step on 'er!"

      With all that tumult of urging, Jack went on, panic again growing within him as the car picked up speed. The faster he went the faster he wanted to go. His foot pressed harder and harder on the accelerator. He glanced at the speedometer, saw it flirting with the figures forty-five, and sent that number off the dial and forced fifty and then sixty into sight. He rode the wheel, holding the great car true as a bullet down the black streak of boulevard that came sliding to meet him like a wide belt between whirring wheels.

      The solemn voice that had croaked "S-o-m-e time!" so frequently, took to monotonous, recriminating speech. "No-body home! No-body home! Had to spill the beans, you simps! Nobody home a-tall! Had to shoot a man—got us all in wrong, you simps! Nobody home!" He waggled his head and flapped his hands in drunken self-righteousness, because he had not possessed a gun and therefore could not have committed the blunder of shooting the man.

      "Aw, can that stuff! You're as much to blame as anybody," snapped the man nearest him, and gave the croaker a vicious jab with his elbow.

      "Don't believe that guy got hep to our number! Didn't have time," an optimist found courage to declare.

      "What darn fool was it that shot first? Oughta be crowned for that!"

      "Aw, the boob started it himself! He fired on us—and we were only joshing!"

      "He got his, all right!"

      "Don't believe we killed him—sure, he was more scared than hurt," put in the optimist dubiously.

      "No-body home," croaked the solemn one again, having recovered his breath.

      They wrangled dismally and unconvincingly together, but no one put into speech the fear that rode them hard. Fast as Jack drove, they kept urging him to "Step on 'er!" A bottle that had been circulating intermittently among the crowd was drained and thrown out on the boulevard, there to menace the tires of other travelers. The keen wind whipped their hot faces and cleared a little their fuddled senses, now that the bottle was empty. A glimmer of caution prompted Jack to drive around through Beverly Hills and into Sunset Boulevard, when he might have taken a shorter course home. It would be better, he thought, to come into town from another direction, even if it took them longer to reach home. He was careful to keep on a quiet residence street when he passed through. Hollywood, and he turned at Vermont Avenue СКАЧАТЬ